The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (27 page)

‘None of them with any damn chance of sticking it seems to me.’

McCall shook his head impatiently and pressed on: ‘And when we get back, with or without Shannon and this bunch in custody – and with or without the stolen money – I’ll 173

see to it you get Drayton’s wagon and team in lieu of a deputy’s pay. And I think I can promise you a grateful townspeople will put your way whatever work there happens to be for a teamster around here.’

Edge had replied with his ready-made decision: ‘Give me back my Colt and you’ve got a deal.’

McCall betrayed his relief only by swallowing hard as he thrust his own revolver in the holster and instructed: ‘Bart, give the man back his sixgun.’

He went to the rifle rack, filled again with the Winchesters carried by the last posse to ride out of Dalton Springs, repossessed from the wagon at
Caja Fuerte.

‘But how do we know he won’t . . ?’ Bannerman tried to hold Edge’s glittering, narrow eyed gaze but could not do that and also finish what he had started to say. McCall rescued him from the ill-conceived intent to voice doubt about the integrity of the press-ganged third member of the posse. ‘Matter of riding with a man and reading his character from his actions, Bart.’

He unlocked the bar that held the rifles in place. ‘To my certain knowledge, Edge hasn’t done a single thing in this town that suggests he’s anything but an honest man. According to his own code of living.’

He paused before he added: ‘Which may not be the same as ours, I guess it has to be said?’

He eyed Edge quizzically and drew an impassive response then shrugged. ‘He told me once the only time he doesn’t do what he says he’ll do was when he’s stopped by force. So I reckon he’ll keep to his end of the deal: uphold the oath I’ll administer while you go over to Ephraim’s place, Bart?’

Bannerman nodded and looked relieved to have something to do. ‘Sure thing, John.’

‘Get our horses and a good one for Edge. And a pack animal. Bring them to the grocery store. Where we’ll be getting the trail rations.’

Thus had it come about that the three of them rode out of town on fresh mounts with a laden pack horse in tow. Each man armed with a revolver and rifle and with a tin star pinned to his jacket lapel. Following a cold trail, but one of them having a good idea of 174

where they were headed. Because McCall knew something of Luke Shannon’s activities before he hired on to mix murderously in Mexican politics.

‘He hails from the mid-west someplace,’ the lawman told Edge while they waited outside the store for their order to be filled and watched Bannerman come down the street from the livery, leading four horses by the reins.

‘But for a couple of years he’s done his robbing and killing all over the south west territories. Got a bolthole at Garfield City, so it’s said. And it’s for sure Chrissy Walters –

the bitch he’s tied up with – used to be a whore at the Town House in that town in the gold fever days. So that’s where I plan to start to look for him.’

‘That sounds reasonable, feller,’ Edge allowed evenly.

McCall showed a rare grin and nodded as he dug out a cigar. ‘What I figured you’d say. It means we have to go north. And north is the way you want to go some time soon –

to catch up with Ezra Franklinn, right?

‘Sure.’

So that was the way they headed, leaving Dalton Springs as a watch in Bannerman’s vest pocket chimed eleven times. Knowing they had no chance at all of picking up on the cold trail of their quarry who left town in a south westerly direction: all hope pinned on finding a clue to Shannon’s whereabouts in his old stamping ground. Which was a two or maybe three day riding away.

At mid-afternoon that first day, as Bannerman’s watch chimed a quarter or a half hour mark, they met up with the stage. Running at least four hours later and travelling at a headlong pace in an attempt to get back on schedule.

Just raised hands from the driver and his shotgun rider and identical responses from the three man posse served for greetings as the battered Concord thundered on by in a billowing cloud of gritty dust that became pasted by sweat to the trio’s faces.

‘I told you it’d be a long wait, didn’t I?’ Bannerman reminded as the dust raised by the wheel-rims and hooves settled around them.

Just before nightfall they rode up to a point on the trail where a spur angled off to the left.

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McCall ended a lengthy period without talk to explain: ‘That’s the start of the loop that intersects the south west trail out of town, Edge. The old stage road. Runs by the Tremaine place where Kitty Raine gave up on you.’

‘I don’t reckon she ran away because she was scared of the ghost that’s supposed to haunt it,’ Edge said evenly.

‘Whatever. It’s some unfinished business best left that way for the time being?’

‘No sweat.’

Bannerman’s watch marked the hour of nine as they reached in moonlit darkness a stage line way station that a sign above the door named as
HEAVEN’S GATE.
Edge recalled driving the wagon past the two dilapidated, single story clapboard buildings with a corral out back on his way down from Tucson to Dalton Springs. There had been no reason to halt there then: no sign on life on the place, let alone any invitation to stay awhile and rest up.

Tonight he discovered the station was run by a grizzled, bright eyed, inordinately skinny old timer named Grundy who told him the place was named long ago by a gold grubber convinced there was a mother lode in the hill behind the station. And the riches he planned to dig out of the conically shaped mound would open the gate of heaven on earth for him.

Grundy related the tale in the stable where the newcomers took care of their own horses and en-stalled them with the four animals already in there. While the excited old timer watched eagerly from the doorway, holding high a kerosene lamp for the men to work by, talking up a storm.

‘But the Apaches did for him.’ He held his skinny belly with his free hand and giggled like a young girl, a manic sparkle in his suddenly bulging eyes that suggested he was unhinged. ‘So iffen that grubber had been a righteous man, he sure found the gate to the real heaven on high right here. But if he didn’t live so good, it was the jaws of hell that opened up for him after the Injuns come to call.’

Later, as they ate a supper of tough stewed beef and some unidentifiable vegetables, Edge asked Grundy if any strangers had called at the way station recently.

‘Nah.’ An emphatic shake of his hairless head. ‘Ain’t nobody ever comes here unless on the stage. ‘Can’t ever recall nobody, leastways. In all the years I been here. Just the 176

stage line guys and the passengers they carry. Ain’t never been many of them, neither. Stage come by today, but it didn’t even stop.’

Edge found his attention briefly drawn from Grundy toward McCall. Saw the sheriff shake his head, lift a hand and rotate a forefinger at his temple to signal he had been right to doubt the old timer’s sanity.

But he pressed on: ‘A woman, feller? Riding alone? Last week? Or three men and a woman just the other day?’

Grundy scowled and Edge thought the old man had glimpsed the derogatory gesture made by McCall. But after a fast double take, he saw Grundy was glowering fixedly at him rather than the lawman.’

‘I damn well told you, mister! Ain’t no one ever rides this trail and stops over here. Unless on the stage. And sometimes I get to change the teams, look after the animals between stages. I told you that, didn’t I? Not nobody!’

Edge was aware of McCall eyeing him with a conceited smirk but he challenged:

‘
We’re
here, feller.’

The old timer vented another giggle that immediately descended from girlishness to a deeper, harsher sound entirely devoid of mirth. He stabbed out a shaking forefinger and swept it around the men seated at the table and sprayed saliva with the force of his emotion as he claimed:

‘You don’t fool me, mister! Nobody ever fools old Pete Grundy! I know you ain’t really here. You’re just inside my head is where you all are! Dreamed up to keep me company. I know that, on account of I do it all the time. So don’t you try to fool me no more, you hear?’

When Edge glanced at McCall the lawman displayed an even more demonstrative
I
told you so
grin.

Bannerman looked at Grundy with deep pity in his watery blue eyes and shook his bald head ruefully.

For what remained of the late evening before the four of them bedded down the old timer did as much talking to himself as to the other and the nonsense he spoke was ignored by them.

177

Grundy had a cot in his own small room at the rear of the main building, while his visitors slept in their bedrolls on the floor in the public room that served all other purposes of caring for transients at Heaven’s Gate.

Out on the trail next morning, McCall was dyspeptic from being the only man to share in Grundy’s greasy, undercooked breakfast and after a cursory glance back at the way station he rasped sourly:

‘Maybe you’ll listen to me next time I talk about something I know of, Edge? Pete Grundy’s been crazy as a loon for years.’

‘Some say it was the loneliness of the job that got to him and drove him out of his mind,’ Bannerman offered morosely. ‘Others reckon he was already mad when he came to Heaven’s Gate. Driven to it by a faithless wife.’

‘Whatever made the old bastard how he is,’ McCall growled, ‘the only people he believes are real have to be from off the stage. Rest of the time he talks to folks he imagines are there. Or he gabbles on to the horses like they’re people that give him answers.’

‘Ain’t a man can take better care of horseflesh than Grundy,’ Bannerman said with a shrug. ‘Treats them like he did his wife before she cheated on him and drove him mad, some say.’

McCall looked hard at Bannerman but judged from the big man’s ingenuous expression that he had not intended any oblique reference to Kitty Raine. Several hours later, after he glanced at the blazing sun nearing its midday zenith, Bannerman said: ‘My belly reckons it‘s close to feeding time.’

He delved for his watch to check if noon really was only minutes away. Then glowered and muttered a mild curse as he peered along their back trail.

‘Your watch, Bart?’ McCall enquired.

‘It’s gone, John.’

‘You must’ve lost it.’

‘I never did before.’ He sent another backward glance across the arid hill country in the direction of the long out of sight way station. ‘You think maybe Pete Grundy ain’t so 178

crazy as he makes out? That he’s got an eye or what’s real valuable carried by people he ain’t dreamed up in his imagination?’

Edge said: ‘I guess we should all have realised the watch was gone. Way it hasn’t been sounding off every fifteen minutes this morning.’

Bannerman shook his head. ‘I turned off the chimes last night. After John complained he couldn’t sleep on account of the noise.’

Edge dug for the makings and briefly recalled but did not voice Emily Jonas’s contention about a clear conscience making for a sound night’s rest. McCall said: ‘We’ll be riding back this way, Bart. Sooner or later.’

‘Yeah, and Pete Grundy’s never been known to leave Heaven’s Gate for any reason at all, has he?’ Bannerman reminded himself pensively.

It was in the middle of another blisteringly hot afternoon, two and a half day’s riding from Dalton Springs, when the trio of jacketless men with stars now pinned to their shirt fronts reined in their mounts on the brow of a hill that formed the south western side of a valley.

It was a broad fold in the barren hills between gentle, shale streaked slopes at this point, but gradually narrowed toward the west, to funnel into a steep sided canyon, the rims of the towering sandstone cliffs as featureless as their sheer faces. Immediately below where the three men sat their saddles astride unmoving horses was the end of an abandoned railroad track which ran arrow straight along the centre of the valley and disappeared into the canyon mouth maybe three miles distant. The hot, bright sun did not glint on any section of the laid track, which was as rusty as the unused rails stacked in an untidy heap beside a pile of ties where work on the line had come to a premature end, not in the recent past.

‘The Golden Line it was called,’ Bannerman pronounced with a contemplative shake of his head. ‘No train ever ran along that track, Mr Edge.’

McCall gave a non-committal grunt, tugged on his reins and heeled his horse down the gently sloping valley side, angling toward the far off mouth of the canyon. Which was a little south of the due west direction they had been riding since they cut off the north bound trail after they broke night camp this morning.